


witch, which, wish

by cerebel



Category: Once Upon a Time (2011)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Bargaining, F/F, Magic, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:37:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerebel/pseuds/cerebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young woman trades her mind for magic. She is saved by a faerie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	witch, which, wish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silencedancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silencedancer/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Ведьма, вопрос, вожделение](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1878096) by [Lupa_gangrel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lupa_gangrel/pseuds/Lupa_gangrel)



> This is all pure conjecture, basically not at all supported by Once Upon A Time canon. But recipient asked for femslash involving young!Evil Queen and young!Maleficent, and I was only too happy to oblige!
> 
> Evil Queen goes by Regina in the story because I felt it was a bit premature to call her 'The Evil Queen'.

She is wild, she is young, she runs with the wind and the birds and changes her shape on trills of laughter. She is human. (Is she? What does human mean?) The flap of a raven’s wings, sinking her claws into grey-stained-red fur, slithering under leaves dry as paper and slipping through the water with other otters crowded thick nearby.

She is a witch. Witch, witch, _witch_ , the world sings with her, and she doesn’t remember being anything else. She’s forgotten why she learned and how she learned and whether or not she had -- what’s the word -- a _mother_. Even language itself has started to fade from her tongue --

Witch, witch, which. Wish.

~*~

 _”I will give you the power you seek,” says Rumplestiltskin, his mouth quirked, wry, as though he’s enjoying a joke in a language only he understands. “But it will have a price.”_

 _The breath catches in her throat, and she nods. She is young, and she is dark-haired and she is only human, but she wishes she could be more._

 _“Then,” says Rumplestiltskin, “I will take away your memory.”_

~*~

She eats as a wolf, stalking and catching and tearing at a deer. Blood and skin and bone. Elegance fades, tear by tear, into scraps of meat. Scraps of nothing.

She gorges herself, a she-wolf of pure black fur and sky-blue eyes.

After, she stares at the deer, not remembering how it got there.

She assumes its form, with long legs and wide, innocent eyes. She runs until the branches of the trees turn to blurs.

~*~

Over time, she becomes aware that humanity is encroaching on her territory. She smells them: swine and waste, smoke and salt. They churn the grass to mud, and they break the trees, and they stalk her. There are rumors of the black wolf, the black deer, the black cat. They try to kill her, but the arrows swish and whistle their presence and she turns to smoke before one may strike.

So.

So she stands on a rock, the wind whipping around her, the cold of autumn mattering nothing against her bare skin. She raises words of power and vengeance, and the earth tears asunder under her feet and the woods part like a woman’s thighs and then the village, such as it is, stands alone on a cliff surrounded by endless chasms.

They starve.

She smells the rot of their corpses and salivates.

~*~

As every wild animal must:

In time, she is caught.

This trap is not of rope or iron (those traps: she melts them away, spirits them into fire and smoke). This trap is a binding of wormwood and myrrh, and this she cannot break. Simple lines of herbs bringing her wrists behind her, wrapping them in criss-crossing lines and imprinting the lines of leaves to her skin.

She falls to her knees.

She is aimless, oddly. She has never experienced a trap such as this one, and instead of fear, all she feels is grief. As though she has been gutted, as though a terrible sadness has been realized.

Fingers touch her chin, and she looks up.

~*~

 _She remembers, for a moment, a flicker of sparkle and color. Dancers swishing by, feet scraping on a stone floor, the chime of a tambourine handmade._

 _She remembers beauty --_

~*~

The face above her is beautiful. Smooth skin and blond hair in ringlets, flowing over slim shoulders a thousand times more elaborate than the largest waterfall that she has ever seen. She takes in the nose, the chin, the rounded cheeks.

“Hmm,” says the beautiful apparition. The woman before her.

The woman takes a breath. And when she speaks, she speaks in the language of leaf and tree, river and field. “Do you understand me?”

“I understand.” _Beautiful_ , her mind whispers.

“You’ve lost your mind,” the woman says. “Do you want it back?”

She hadn’t realized she’d lost _anything_. But now she knows, now she understands, and a fierce panic grips her. “Yes,” she breathes.

“I don’t have one to spare,” the woman tells her, wry. “But I do have something else.”

“What?”

The woman purses her lips. “Rage,” she says. “I will give you enough rage to gain your memory, and you will give me... anything. In return. One gift for another.”

She nods, dumbly.

And after that, all she knows is pain.

~*~

The woman introduces herself as Maleficent.

She makes Regina (this being the name she chooses, as her memories return) a cup of tea. Starts a roaring fire, in her little cottage in the woods, and when Regina blinks, she seems to see a pair of gossamer dragonfly wings from Maleficent’s shoulders.

“I won’t owe you any favors,” Regina vows. “You’ll have your gift. Right now.”

Maleficent smiles at her. “Okay,” she says, affably. Friendly, of course, because now the anger that boils hot through Regina’s veins, clearing her mind, scalding out her thoughts -- now that anger is gone from Maleficent and is in Regina instead.

“Okay,” Maleficent repeats. “I want you.”

Regina blinks. “Excuse me?”

“I want you,” she says. Honest desire in her eyes, transparent.

Regina feels suddenly uncomfortable. This is the longest she’s been in a human skin in months. She has never... she doesn’t...

She sweeps to her feet.

“That is your request,” she says. “And I will give it, but on my own time.”

Maleficent just smiles, dumbly, like she’s been drugged.

Regina slams the door behind her when she leaves.

~*~

Regina returns to her father.

She throws her arms around his neck and cries and tells him, quietly, that she’s become a witch, and that she’ll be able to provide for them evermore. She, the Queen, and he, her servant.

~*~

It takes her weeks, but she ventures, timidly, cautiously to Maleficent.

When the faerie opens the door -- well, there is nothing of that drugged, stymied happiness there. Maleficent is aware, and there is cruelty buried in her gaze.

Regina smiles.

“I have found an ancient spell,” she announces, after she is inside and tea has been made. “It requires two. Will you work it with me or not?”

“I don’t know,” drawls Maleficent. “You don’t have much real _practice_ , do you? I don’t want to spend six months as a black deer...”

Regina’s smile falters. Just a twitch. “I could have killed you,” she tells Maleficent. “After you rescued me, you were helpless.”

Maleficent raises a perfect blonde eyebrow. “My dear,” she says, “you have much to learn about small talk.” She waves a hand, clearing the hearth of leaf and dust. “Tell me about this spell.”

Regina does.

They work it together, and summon power the likes of which Regina has never felt before. They ride it like a swell, summon thunderstorms and snow and choke the land with winter.

In August.

~*~

It continues like this. Shy overtures on the part of Regina. She stays silent, much of the time, and just listens to the faerie speak. And Maleficent’s words -- ah, her words! Her words are truly something. They don’t weave webs -- a spider’s webs are delicate, fragile things, destroyed with the wave of a hand. They don’t spin thread -- thread is broken by time, by fire, by knives. They build palaces gleaming. They make labyrinths of stone and monsters. They are works of art.

Regina imitates her, tentatively.

~*~

They are both young, still, and the firelight is weakening from flame to coal.

Regina lounges on the hearth, and remembers that they haven’t spoken of what she owes. Of what Maleficent has asked of her.

She considers her own body: delicate feet, calves in a sweet curve, her pale thighs and her hips and her breasts. There is something here Maleficent wants.

She turns to her friend. ( _Friend._ ) And she says:

“I’m ready to return your gift.”

Maleficent kneels above her, with a smile.

Her laces are undone, her dress loosened, and she steps out of it and lays the cloth aside. In just a slip, she is, and Maleficent takes her to the bed. Her quickening desire, terrible and wet at her center.

Lips at her nipple -- hardening, under a questing tongue.

Her body shivers and shudders, but Maleficent does not let up.

Teeth worry at her neck and _she_ worries of bruises and marks against her pale skin.

The soft hands of her friend part her thighs and before she knows it, before she understands what is happening to her, her hips are pressing up, rolling against the heel of Maleficent’s hand because it’s pressed _right there_ and there’s Maleficent’s voice hushing her, and is that her, gasping? She can’t find her breath, and it all quickens and --

Like casting a spell, the moment of releasing the magic, but a thousand times more devastating.

“Hold on,” says Maleficent, with a smile. “See how it feels with a tongue, too.”

In the end, Regina is brave enough to touch, too. She buries her fingers inside and twists them until Maleficent makes noises that she likes, and then she pulls and thrusts and wriggles until Maleficent’s body clenches around her hand.

Just like casting a spell. Fingerwork, the right words. Just like casting a spell.

~*~

“Are you going to leave me now, little dark one?” asks Maleficent, as Regina does up the laces of her gown.

“Why would I?” asks Regina. And she tells the truth: “You’re my only friend.”


End file.
